You don't need to be a member to try our services. Just click on "START YOUR
WILL" or a "TRY IT NOW" link
on our home page.
But you do need to create an account if you want to purchase or continue to work on your documents.
They don't have to be completed all in one sitting.

MyWill™ - Write a Last Will and Testament in North Dakota

"I used your service to write a Will for my dear wife Christine who passed
away this year. The Will was easy to fill out and very straightforward. I never
had one problem arise because of the Will." ---
Keith Sutton, Surrey, B.C. Read more
testimonials

We have removed the obstacles to writing a Will. It is
convenient, low cost, and simple. The MyWill™ service steps you through a
series of questions in a "wizard" format. All questions are written in
plain language, so you don't have to be a legal expert to create your own Will.
You simply answer the questions, complete the details, and we automatically and
instantly format a document that forms the basis of a legal Will, custom-made for
your local jurisdiction. If you live in Canada, this document
can then be printed and signed in front of witnesses to become a legally binding
document. There is also plenty of supplementary information to help answer
all of your questions.

Make unlimited updates free of charge. Don't pay a lawyer every
time you need to update your Will. We allow your Will to be kept securely
online at
LegalWills.ca
so that you can make unlimited updates for as long
as you are a member here. For example, if you have a significant change in
your life you can revoke your previous Wills and create a new, updated version.
If you change your marital status, have a new child, make a significant
purchase, move homes, or get a pet --- all of your revised wishes can be
captured in a new version of your Will. Not only will you have a legal
Will, but it will always be kept up to date.

You can still have it reviewed by a lawyer. We have worked with
lawyers in Canada to bring you the MyWill™ service and to
ensure that it is of the highest quality. But if you wish, we can still
arrange for your Will to be reviewed by a lawyer, who will check the document
for consistency and completeness.

Do not put it off any longer. The vast majority of people do not
have a Will. Some people feel that they do not need one because they
believe that the distribution of their estate is obvious. Others find it
to be too time consuming to get organized, find a lawyer, arrange appointments
and attend meetings during their already busy schedules. Many feel that
the lawyers' fees surrounding the creation and maintenance of a Will are too
expensive. Whatever your reason may be, you should know that it is
extremely important that you have an up to date Will. If you die without a
Will, the courts will decide how your estate is distributed, and this may not be
in the best interests of your loved ones. It is impossible for us to know
how your estate will be distributed, but we do know that if you have a Will,
then the decisions are in your hands.

Follow the simple instructions to sign your Legal Will

MyWill™- Frequently Asked Questions

For an informative and eye-opening comparison of the MyWill™ service to
do-it-yourself legal will kits, read about it here.

Quite frankly, there is no comparison. We have evaluated many
existing do-it-yourself legal will kits, including several of the most
popular Canadian legal will kits. We were shocked
by the poor quality, limited instructions, and low value for money that many of
these will kits provide consumers. We have designed the MyWill™ service
to be of the best quality available today. Furthermore, our membership
pricing model also allows us to provide you with the most value for your money
at prices that are unprecedented in the legal industry.

First of all, by making use of the MyWill™ service conveniently online over
the Internet, there is no need to purchase a do-it-yourself legal will kit in
the first place, nor do you need to purchase an upgraded version every year.
Incredible value for money. Our wizards, help and information are also designed to be the
best on the market and are kept up-to-date on an ongoing basis.

In addition, the MyWill™ service provides you with complete instructions and
answers your questions in everyday language, free of legal industry jargon.
We have developed this service based on the requirements of the public, not
dictated by the legal profession.

Furthermore, our unique approach allows you to make use of the ultimate
convenience of the Internet to create your Will at your own pace, online, 24
hours a day, 365 days a year, and to make changes online at any time free of
charge.

By storing your Will online, you can take advantage of our unique
messaging service which allows you to describe the exact location of your
Will and to provide a detailed list of assets for your Executor. All for no
extra charge. When you pass away, let us worry about communicating this
information to the people you specify. There is simply no other company that
provides such a complete and convenient service to their customers.

Combined with this is a strong focus on protecting the privacy and
security of your information. We use industry standard encryption
algorithms for storing all of your private information, and the design of
LegalWills.ca
ensures that the contents of your Will are made available to
the specific people designated by yourself, and only at the appropriate time.

If you wish, we can even inform you by email about any changes in
legislation
which may have occurred in your jurisdiction that may require changes to your
Will. Or we can send you simple email reminders, no more than once a year,
to remind you to consider updating your Will if any significant changes have
occurred in your life.

Do-it-yourself legal will kits simply do not compare. Also, take a look
at the news article warning about the use of
do-it-yourself legal will kits.

The MyWill™ service steps you through a simple question and answer wizard,
formats your answers into a readable format, and allows you to make unlimited
updates to your Will while allowing you to store your information securely
online. You can then designate your own personal "Keyholders® ", who with
their unique ID can unlock your Will at the appropriate time.

The MyWill™ service can be used to generate a custom-made Last Will
and Testament in Canada (except Quebec).
In order to make this a legal document, you should
first print it and read it thoroughly. Make sure that it accurately reflects
your wishes and that you understand everything that is contained in the
document. According to the current laws in most jurisdictions, in order to be a
legal document your Will must be signed in the presence of at least two
witnesses, and the two witnesses must also sign the Will, in the presence of the
"testator" (yourself) and in the presence of each other. You and the witnesses
should also initial each page, so that it is not possible to alter any pages
after the Will has been signed. In most jurisdictions, a witness cannot be a
beneficiary of the Will, they cannot be the spouse of a beneficiary (at the time
of signing), they cannot be a minor, and, like the "testator" (you), they must
be of sound mind.

Although the unsigned version of your Will stored online at
LegalWills.ca
is not a legal document, if you wish you can allow one or more of your
designated Keyholders® to have access to the Will that you have created here at
LegalWills.ca.
This could be important if your legally signed copy
cannot be located (for example, if it burned in a house fire). In this
situation, your LegalWills.ca
Will can still provide some guidance to a
loving family, as they can understand how you wanted your property to be
distributed.

However, "digital signature" laws are moving rapidly and we are
closely monitoring these laws to support the future electronic notarization of
documents, including the digital signature of your Will. It is only a
matter of time before this becomes standard practice in preparing legal
documents.

More details on the process to be followed for creating a legal document are
included in the help text of the MyWill™ service. If these instructions are
followed, then your Will is a legally binding document.

In order to make a Will that you create on this web site into a legal
document, you should first print it and read it thoroughly. Make sure that it
accurately reflects your wishes and that you understand everything that is
contained in the document. Once you are happy that it reflects your wishes, you
must sign your Will in the presence of at least two witnesses, and these
witnesses must also sign the Will, in the presence of the "testator" (yourself)
and in the presence of each other. You and the witnesses should also initial
each page, so that it is not possible to alter any pages after the Will has been
signed. A witness cannot be a beneficiary of the Will, they cannot be the spouse of
a beneficiary (at the time of signing), they cannot be a minor, and, like the
"testator" (you), they must be of sound mind. More information about this procedure and the restrictions on who can be
witnesses is included at the end of the MyWill wizard.

In Canada, after you have passed away the executor of your Will must prove that your
Will was signed properly. In order to do this, at least one of the witnesses
must confirm under oath that the Will was signed and witnessed correctly.
Another more convenient approach, however, is to have the witnesses sign under
oath (in the presence of a Notary Public) an "affidavit" which can then be
appended to the Will. This is an optional step, but it eliminates the need for
the witnesses to testify in court at the probating of the Will. Again, a
detailed description of this procedure is included at the end of the MyWill
wizard.

It is important to review your Will every few years and after any new
financial or personal events, such as a significant business arrangement, a
wedding, the birth of a child, a divorce or if you move outside of your state,
province or country.

You can choose to have a 1-year, 10-year, 25-year or Life membership at
LegalWills.ca,
during which time you can make as many updates or amendments
to your Will as you wish at no extra charge. More details regarding the
membership packages available can be found when making your purchase.

This really depends on the complexity of your Will. The essence of a
Will is simply stating that you leave something to somebody. If you are
leaving everything to one person, and you have no other dependents or family
members, particularly from previous marriages, your Will could be very simple
and quick to create.

However, LegalWills.ca
will also allow you to create quite complex Wills
that will require a great deal more thought and consideration. In this
case we would also recommend that you have the Will reviewed by a professional
lawyer, which will be a longer overall process, but can still be done
conveniently from our web site.

You do not need to complete your Will in one sitting. You can answer a
couple of questions and then store these wishes securely online here at
LegalWills.ca
until you have a few more minutes to answer additional
questions. If you prefer, you can spend many weeks or months making
unlimited updates until you are happy with your final results, at which point
you could have your final copy reviewed and signed.

All of your information stored at LegalWills.ca
is safe and secure.
Your information is so highly encrypted that nobody has access to this
information other than yourself and your trusted Keyholders® using their
randomly generated personal key. Even the owners and administrators of
LegalWills.ca
are not able to access your information due to the software
design and encryption methods used.

Note, however, that some services require temporary decryption of a member's documents
as part of the operation of providing that service.
For example, if the member wants to have their Will reviewed by one of our legal
professionals, or wants to have their documents printed and mailed to them, then
the software will automatically decrypt these documents as part of the member's
instructions to have these services performed.

All data passing from your computer to
LegalWills.ca
is authenticated and
encrypted using 256-bit "SSL encryption". This is the most advanced level
of encryption available today, and it means that any information sent from your
computer is scrambled in a way which makes it completely unintelligible if
intercepted. When you are on a secure section within the web
site, a padlock will appear on your web browser.
This is your assurance that the encryption is in place and that you are
communicating across a secure link.

Furthermore, LegalWills.ca
uses an industry standard high security
streaming-encryption algorithm known as "RSA" to encrypt all of your information
before it is stored online. To give you a feeling for the level of
security provided by this encryption, it has been estimated that with the most
efficient algorithms known to date, it would take a computer operating at 1
million instructions per second over 300 quintillion years (that's 3 with 20
zeros behind it!) to break the encryption. That's several trillion times longer
than the age of the Earth.

All of our data is securely stored in a highly encrypted format on database
servers. To protect against catastrophic data loss, daily backups are
performed on each of our servers. Hence, if
any one of our servers experienced technical difficulties, the data would not be
at risk.

Here are a few common reasons that people indicate there is no point in
writing a Will:

"I don't really care who gets my estate. I'll be gone anyway."
Without a Will, your property may not go to the people that you wish to
benefit. In most countries there is a law that decides how property should
be distributed if a person dies 'intestate' (without a Will). The actual
administration of your estate will also be complicated and difficult. The
courts will usually decide who will act as a personal representative or
'executor' for distributing your possessions, and the laws in your local
jurisdiction will determine who will get what. This may lead to acrimonious
legal disputes between your survivors. Note that if you have no heirs, all
of your assets, property and possessions can pass to your local government.
The effort required to draft your Will is insignificant compared to the
difficulties that dying without a Will presents to your survivors.

"It's obvious who will get my estate. It will go to my spouse."
Local laws will determine who will receive your possessions, which may or
may not reflect your intentions. If you die without a Will and you are
married, your assets will not automatically go to your surviving spouse.
Local laws may determine that others, including children, may be entitled to
a share. This will be determined by the laws of "Intestate Succession"
which vary from state to state, province to province, country to country,
and will frequently lead to messy legal cases.

"I don't have an estate of any value."Even if you don't believe that you have an estate of any value, your
death itself may generate a sizeable benefit. For example, your
beneficiaries may be entitled to the proceeds of a life insurance claim, a
wrongful death suit, a claim in the event of some negligence resulting in
your death. These can be significant sums of money.

Quite clearly, there is never a situation where a Will is unnecessary.
In many cases, this can be a simple declaration of your wishes for how your
estate should be distributed, and this can be achieved by working through the
MyWill™ wizard here at
LegalWills.ca.
You should draft a Will while
you are still young and healthy, even if you don't feel that your assets are
substantial. There is absolutely no benefit in waiting until you are
older. To die without a Will is irresponsible and places a tremendous
burden on your survivors.

A joint Will is a single document, signed by "co-testators" (usually
spouses), intended to reflect the wishes of both parties. This is generally
considered to be an extremely bad idea, and probably worse than having no Will
at all. Often, the intent of a joint Will is to declare that each person would
leave everything to the surviving partner, and in the event that both partners
are victims of a common disaster, everything would go to their children. The
problem is that it is unclear whether a surviving partner can revoke a joint
Will and many messy legal cases have arisen as a result of this confusion.

In short, do not make a joint Will, as there could be problems if either
party changes their mind, or wishes to amend the Will. There may also be
problems if the surviving spouse tries to make any changes to a joint Will, as
they may be bound to the original terms. Furthermore, there is no reason
to create a joint Will, as there is no disadvantage to drawing up a separate Will
for each partner.

Although the MyWill™ question-and-answer wizard is applicable for most cases,
there are circumstances where it is advisable to seek legal advice. In
particular:

If you are a resident of Quebec.

If you are involved in a matrimonial dispute, or wish to disinherit your
spouse or children.

If you have a history of mental illness, or the question of your mental
capacity may be raised in objection to the statements in the Will.

If you own personal property or real estate in multiple countries.

If you are under the age of adulthood.

If you have complicated business investments (e.g. you are part owner of
property or businesses where ownership may be challenged).

If you are about to be married and are preparing a Will in contemplation
of that marriage.

If you have a large, complex estate and feel that you
would benefit from some advice on estate planning and tax reduction.

If you own a farm, as there may be significant estate planning
implications.

If you need to provide for long term medical care for a dependent.

If you have any litigation pending which involve large sums of money or
where a prison term is possible.

If you think that somebody may challenge your Will in court or you have
any other doubts about your situation.

In the above situations and in other more complex situations (the above is
not an exhaustive list), it would not be advisable to rely on the output of the
MyWill™ wizard as an accurate expression of your wishes. However, even in
these circumstances there is value in stepping through the MyWill™ wizard in
preparation for a consultation with an attorney.

We are unable to draw up a Will specifically for you, as the courts would
regard this as entering into a "client-attorney relationship". In doing
this we would be guilty of "Unauthorized Practice of Law," as legal advice can
only be given by a person licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction.
This is a serious offense. However, you do not need to have a lawyer to
create your Will, and at
LegalWills.ca
we give you the tools to create a
Will based on your family situation and your plans for your estate.
Furthermore, the legal wording contained in all of the Wills that can be created
at LegalWills.ca
have been produced and reviewed by lawyers. By using
our intuitive question and answer wizard you will be able to create a legal Will
that satisfies your requirements. In addition, we offer an optional
service which allows you have your completed Will reviewed by one of our
lawyers, who is able to check for consistency and completeness within your final
document.

Some people may benefit from more extensive estate planning techniques, such
as: setting up trusts, limiting probate, and tax reduction schemes.
However, these usually require detailed (and often expensive) professional
guidance. Quite often, younger people and people with straightforward
plans for their estate do not pursue the creation of extensive estate plans.
Others postpone extensive estate planning for later in life, when their
financial and family circumstances settle down. Nevertheless, regardless
of your age or your financial situation, it is imperative to have a Will.
Detailed estate planning can come later.

We have worked extensively with lawyers in Canada to ensure that the legal
documents created by the MyWill™,
MyExpatWill™,
MyPowerOfAttorney™ and
MyLivingWill™ services are up to date
with the laws in all of the provinces in
Canada, including: Alberta,
British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador,
Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island,
Saskatchewan, and Yukon. Hence, our
services can be used to generate legal documents in any Canadian province with the
exception of Quebec.
If you are in Quebec, you can consider downloading a Quebec Will Kit from QuebecWillKit.ca.

If you have any doubts about the legal standing of any documents in your
jurisdiction, feel free to seek legal counsel in your area to have your
documents reviewed.

There is no requirement to use the services of a lawyer or notary public to
prepare your own legal Last Will and Testament. The law that defines the legality
of a Will is written specifically for each Province, State and Country, but in summary
the law requires that the Will is written on a piece of paper and signed in the
presence of two witnesses who cannot be beneficiaries to the Will. Lawyers can
certainly help you to prepare your Will, but everybody has a legal right to write
their own Will. If you create a document using our service, it must be printed,
signed and witnessed according to our instructions, and then it becomes a legal
Last Will and Testament.

There is a considerable amount of information included in the on-line help of
the MyWill™ wizard. This will answer most of the common questions
regarding the steps included in creating your own Will.

For information about the other services available, or about
LegalWills.ca
in general, you can browse this web site or send an email to
support@legalwills.ca.
We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.